Description
The final novel in the highly acclaimed and beloved Thursday Next series. Will
Thursday find her happy ending?
Swindon-based Literary Detective Thursday Next is embarking on her eighth and final
adventure: ‘Dark Reading Matter’ and she is well aware of the fact. The problem is, others
are too. Old foes and new are plotting a terrible revenge: To disrupt the narrative and
make Dark Reading Matter not just unreadable but unpublishable. Thursday can’t let that
happen and needs to use all her guile and narrative trickery to unmask the antagonists
and guide the series to a satisfactory conclusion.
It won’t be easy. The Martians have broken out of their HG Wells novel and threaten both
the real world and the Bookworld. Agents from a higher reality want unfettered access to
the Dark Reading Matter, the realm where deleted books and unrealised literary ideas end
up. A Gateway to Hell has opened up at Wantage’s Shakesmania, the nation’s second to
worst Shakespeare theme park and the cosy world of Enid Blyton has been hi-jacked by
Ultra Right Wing Nationalists. With Reality Field Distortion experiments going haywire, a
partially redacted donkey, a Bookworld on the brink of losing its imaginative energy to Big
Tech and a murderous stamp collector with Philaticide on their mind, Thursday has to
navigate a tightrope of borderline unusable narrative devices to bring the series to a
satisfactory conclusion.
It’s a tall order, but Thursday has a secret weapon: Her own adaptability, her husband
Landen, a host of stalwart friends and ultimately the most loyal compatriots she can call
upon: Her readers.
‘Hugely funny and gloriously imaginative’ Daily Express
‘Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde’
Herald
